


Not Long

by unsettled



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Angst, Community: sherlockkink, Gunplay, M/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-21
Updated: 2010-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:20:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coward comes to exact revenge. It doesn't go quite as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Long

It is late (it is early; the bakers are stirring, and the lamplighters are snuffing streetlamps; he can hear the hiss of air exhausted flame, he can smell the sour tang of yeast; he may not remember how many hours he has been gone, but right now it is 4:35) and there are no lights on at Baker St. Once, there would have been a glow tracing the outline of a certain window, a promise left before sleep claimed another victim. The windows are dark. Mrs. Hudson will not rise for approximately another two and a quarter hours, and this is the only time Holmes sees dawn; from the other side of night.

The hall is dark, but the steps are familiar, the dark is familiar, the indentations and pattern of wear and creaks (third step from the bottom, sixth stair from the top, seven of the sixteen have dips from a cane, two have loose carpet edges) remaining constant, despite recent changes. Three steps from the top, he pauses; the door to the sitting room in ajar, and he can smell something familiar (yet not _familiar_). A step, and another, cautious, slowly, and the smell is coming back, surrounded by leather and gunpowder and wood smoke. A scent of expensive soap and creaking shoe polish and offices in parliament. When he opens the door, he already knows who will be sitting on the settee, who will be pointing a revolver in his direction, who will be waiting.

He is not surprised.

When there is no gunshot, and no movement, and no words, he is a bit surprised, and although he knows a great many things already, he cannot make deductions without data, and so he must make Coward talk.

"Lord Coward," smooth and unconcerned, like armed dawn guests are a regular occurrence (are not completely irregular). Meeting the man's eyes is impossible in shadow. "Would you mind a light?" and, without waiting for a response, he flicks on a lamp. "Or are we no longer a lord, milord?" and if there is one thing Holmes is good at (there are many things he is good at, there are more that he is great at) it is getting under another person's skin.

Coward hisses, and quick as a striking snake, returns the favor. "Why, Holmes, have your observational skills failed you? My status is a matter of public knowledge." The gun does not waver.

Holmes refuses to give ground, and drops into his chair, across from the Lord no more. "Well. I have been a bit busy on matters more important than the disposing of some petty lording." He pauses, but Coward has a tighter hold on his reactions than he had hoped. "Why are you here, Coward? You obviously aren't going to kill me."

Coward jerks at that. "And how," he says, sharp and uncertain, "did you deduce that? Since you are wrong."

"If you were going to kill me, you would have fired before I finished entering the room. To wait suggests you want to speak with me, or at me, and to speech is a humanizing force, which will only make it harder to shoot me, unless of course, you are hoping I will say something so provoking you can rely on rage to carry you through the act. You have never killed a man before, and I do not think you will tonight. You may wish me dead, but you will not be the one make that a reality."

Coward has risen to his feet during his speech, and his eyes are wild in the dim lamplight, his hands shaking on the stock. "Dead. I want you dead. I have wanted you dead for some time now, and I will have you dead at my feet before I leave."

"Why?" Coward stares at him, derailed, and Holmes repeats himself, an indulgence he rarely allows. "Why do you wish me any more dead than the next man?", though he knows the answer, he knows the reason, and, he thinks, he knows the heartache. But Sherlock Holmes is never satisfied with sheer speculation when he can have confirmation.

"Why? Why? Why else, Holmes? Because you killed him. You tore apart all his perfect plans, you destroyed all his dreams for a better world, you took his mastery and made it mockery and laughed at him while you picked apart his mind, and you killed him. And I've no doubt you were pleased. No doubt you thought you were being so very _clever_."

Coward's voice has risen, has begun to shake, has broken by the end, and Holmes is faintly surprised by the depth of emotion in such a man. Blackwood was power and intensity and deviousness, all things to draw a man to worship, but Coward has moved from worship to something else entirely. Coward has given himself over to a man who Holmes is sure never cared a pin for him outside of his usefulness, and his heart has not been returned to him in working condition. Holmes can understand the feeling of a heart that will not pump as it once did, a beat that will not steady, a hole that will not fill. Holmes can understand, and he does understand, and that, he thinks, he where he loses control of his actions.

"Yes," he whispers, and Coward is watching him, pain painted on his face. "I know how it is to wake and see an empty future, when the one who gave it shape is gone. Cleverness cannot help then." He does not think his words will reach Coward, but his face goes white all the same. "Tell me," Holmes asks. "What did you really want from me?"

Coward does not answer him, cannot seem to answer him, and so Holmes answers for him, rising from his loose limbed sprawl to advance as Coward's gun lowers. "It isn't my death you are after, but my life. You want a payment for his death." He is very close now. "You want revenge."

And Coward's gun snaps back up, a cold pressure under his chin, indenting his throat, a gift of quick reactions. "Not another step," Coward whispers. "Revenge," he repeats. "Revenge. Yes, I wanted revenge. I want you to pay. I want you to suffer. I want you to feel as humiliated and terrified and alone as he did in his last moments, and then I want you to live, knowing it will never get better." His eyes are pits, are catching the light and swallowing it, are holding Holmes', a command and a plea in one breath.

"What," he replies, stepping forward against the barrel of the gun, "What makes you think I am not already living that life?" Coward looks at him then, focuses on him and not some vision of the past, and leans forward, the gun sliding along the side of his throat till the trigger guard kisses his shoulder, takes in a familiar breath of shared agony, and kisses him, mouth on mouth, more teeth and blood and saliva than any act of passion or sweetness should be made to be.

Coward pulls away, mouth shiny and swollen and whispers through lips like bruised knuckles, "I want you," half bewildered, half denying, all desire, and Holmes thinks, _I know_, but gives the responsibility back to Coward. "Then take what you want. There's nothing to stop you."

And Coward does

*

When Coward finally comes, deep inside Holmes, Holmes is already limp with satisfaction. Coward buries his teeth in the muscle of Holmes' neck, sliding to meet his shoulder, and if Holmes wasn't so fully sated, he might have to return the favor. Coward collapses to his side, limp on the filthy floor, caught in the aftermath of orgasm. The gun it only one casual stretch away, and if Holmes is going to kill him, there will be no moment better than this. Coward is utterly defenseless. In fact, killing might even be a kindness. Yet even as the thought seizes his mind, Coward begins to shake against his side. Holmes glances over to see he is crying; is sobbing, trembling and gasping as he weeps, a disarming and overwhelming outpouring of grief. Holmes is fascinated. Tears. The one indulgence he hadn't allowed himself over Watson. The one thing he cannot let himself give into.

He rolls to his side, laying one arm over Coward's back, who flinches but seems unable to muffle his sobs. Moved by some instinct he didn't believe himself to even possess, Holmes tugs Coward closer, rolling to his back, bringing Coward along to sprawl half over him. Coward is tense against Holmes until he skims one hand up Coward's back and tangles it in his hair, at which he gives a shuddering exhale and goes limp, head buried in the junction of neck and shoulder, lips brushing Holmes's collarbone as he shakes under the weight of his grief. Holmes stares dry eyed at the ceiling, washed with pale light, mind still, still running in circles, data to conclusion to presentation to be filed away and start the circle again, faster than he could consciously monitor, the sounds of a waking London bombarding him, feeling the tears pooling in the hollows of his earthly form, too skinny, Watson would have something to say about that, and Holmes does not want to know the reasons for his actions tonight (this morning).

"You could stick around to watch me suffer." he tells the man in his arms. "It won't be long, I think, what with the addictions and recklessness, and the lack of an anchor. You and I, we are adrift, and not long for this world because of it."

*

Three weeks later, Lestrade will call on the detective to find him dead of an overdose, an experimental combination of drugs sliding through his arteries, and Coward will be a husk of skin and bones beside him, blood and brains and bullet from a borrowed revolver embedded in the far wall.

Doctor Watson will wonder how he could have been so blind, why he wasn't there to bring some sense to the mad little world Holmes must have been residing in, and in time he will come to understand the effect one's leaving can have on the span another will spend on this earth. It will take him three years to realize how empty the world has become, and all of three seconds to act.

John Watson will not be long for this world either.


End file.
